


Nexus

by empiremind (justlikeabaroness)



Category: Monsta X (Band), 걸어 | All in - Monsta X (Music Video)
Genre: M/M, Prologue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-11 21:14:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11722683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justlikeabaroness/pseuds/empiremind
Summary: The statement that it takes one moment to change the world is a cliche for a reason. It’s true.





	Nexus

The statement that it takes one moment to change the world is a cliche for a reason. It’s true.

In the span of a second, lights can go from on to off; smiles can disappear. A perfectly healthy person can suddenly spring a leak, from blade or bullet or Divine Providence deciding that today is the perfect day to bore a hole in someone’s heart. A soldier can choose to desert. A civilian can choose to scream or stay quiet. A man can strike a match. A crutch can fall on the ground.

A tiny alley in Suncheon can be thrust onto the map in seven minds.

The players are simple: a gaggle of soldiers, ostensibly guarding the bank nearby, still as grave markers, and a group of boys, more than half men, three coming first and four at the rear.

The first is tall, phlegmatic, and as reticent as war and privation has made him. He’s clad in white like some absurd Christian allegory, and offers an awkward thumbs up to the soldiers as they rough up two travelling peddlers, even as he worries over his father’s fate. His friend blows past him, wearing a flat cap and a blank expression, as if waiting to be given his like orphans with gruel. The barrel of a gun is pressed to the brim of his cap, but it’s not threatening him; in fact, he courts it, eyes never leaving the impassive face of the soldier defending his country, his dictator, whatever it is this week, even as he actively pushes the barrel into his skin. He’ll have an O-shaped hole through the crown of his head if he’s not careful, but he’s not careful at all. He’s a master of distraction, drawing fire with a bulletproof stare.

The third boy, though, has dark hair, an innocent face, and a blue cornflower in his hand. His smile is half powered, his eyes glued to the ground, his dark hair only barely reacting to the wind. But it doesn’t stop him from moving with that wind beneath his feet; he smiles and flits and goes up to one of the soldiers, sliding the flower into the gun barrel nearest to his face.

The soldiers turn away, but only to make room for the leading man - a short, small, insignificant man, an angry man wearing a cross, who stands before the cornflower boy with clenching fists. He lashes out; the boy’s face falls sideways, and the blond waif behind him sees it all.

It’s nothing new to the cornflower boy, this violence; this domestic abuse. It’s life, and an hour of it is still life. But to the blond boy, it’s offense - it’s damming a river to fill it full of sewage. In this world, beauty is endangered, and whether it’s bruises and swelling or the bland white mask his love will wear to hide them, the blond boy seethes to see it.

The soldiers lose interest. The instigator in the flat cap stands and jeers. The injured boy sits and watches and files information in his brain’s inner reaches where it can’t be beaten out of him again. The layabout is emotionless, as he so often is. The hanger-on, the neighbor boy, stays silent, having learned already at his age of near manhood that it’s better not to speak.

The cornflower boy is static, staring at the ground, ebullience gone, face as artfully empty as the mountains of words poets mash up to feed the propaganda machine. There’s no blue around him now, no lightness in the air. There is only grey. His face will turn red tomorrow, as red as the rage of his blond guardian.

The moment in the alley has passed. Some will go home to colorless lives. Others will go home to sickness and death. Others will go home to limbo, to stepping lightly until the next time who they are becomes a reason for why they are evil. One will go home to an empty room, and begin to plan. And pray.

The instigator will return to his lair, safeguard his cache, and wait. These boys are his family, and they will come to him. 

Seven lives have already been changed. 


End file.
